Presidential spokesman Harry Roque clarified on Tuesday that he did not say that the government has no mass testing policy and gave assurance that the country aims to be at par with nations like South Korea by being able to conduct around 30,000 tests per day for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19).

“What we are doing is we are trying to follow the best examples that we have and right now we are trying to follow the footsteps of South Korea and that is why the goal is to test 1.5 to 2 percent of the total population,” he said during an interview over CNN Philippines.

“Perhaps, what we have to admit is that we are still building up our testing capacity,” Roque said.

“We are aiming to test 30,000 persons a day which is similar to what South Korea is doing and admittedly we are far from that,” he added.

Roque assured that the government is “hell bent on achieving 30,000 tests per day.”

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“Now that we have opened up the economy, we need really to isolate, locate, and cure those with COVID-19 before the economy opens any further,” the Palace executive pointed out.

Roque had earlier said that the government has no mass testing policy and has to rely on the private sector to do so.

“Actually that was taken out of context,” Roque told CNN.

“It is not accurate to say that we have no mass testing policy,” he added.